Michael Fassbender as creepy android David in Ridley Scott's Prometheus

The question that always bothered me was in the Aliens subsequent to my one, why did no one say, ‘Who was the big guy in the chair?’

Alien and Prometheus director Ridley Scott

But with marketing bigwigs choosing to drip-feed tantalising snippets out on the internet rather than show the entire film to journalists (the swines), several big questions still remain.

Just how much of a prequel will it be? What is the new alien monster? Will it be as groundbreaking as Scott’s 1979 original? Or as soul-crushingly dull as his recent Robin Hood?

The brass tacks can be gleaned from extracts screened to hacks, the odd loose-lipped moment from cast and crew and a string of deliberately oblique promos and trailers.

In 2085, 37 years before the events of Alien, archeologist Dr Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) makes an earth-shattering discovery on the Isle of Skye – a 35,000-year-old space map painted on the wall of a cave.

(The members of Time Team, probably still bigging up broken bits of pot on Channel 4, are no doubt furious.)

To investigate further, she’s tasked with heading up a 17-man space team funded by Weyland Corporation, the sinister technology giant seen in all four previous Alien films.

Their two-and-a-half year flight (the human team in hypersleep, the lonely android awake twiddling knobs) takes them to planet LV-223 (not LV-426, the planet from the first film).

There they learn something terrible about the origins of mankind.

A few familiar sights from the first film are there – alien eggs, the croissant-shaped space craft and the giant dead alien (nicknamed The Space Jockey) that John Hurt clambered over.

And this chap is the key.

Scott says: “The question that always bothered me was in the Aliens subsequent to my one, why did no one say, ‘Who was the big guy in the chair?’”

A clue is the name of our heroes’ spaceship. According to Greek mythology, Prometheus was a Titan who was condemned to be tortured for eternity for sharing the Gods’ secret of fire with man.

The crew, who really should have renamed their ship something a little less ominous, also look set to be punished for learning the secret of our extra-terrestrial creators.

One clip shows android David in a holographic map of the universe where he plucks out a 3D blueprint of the Earth.

“We call them Engineers,” says Noomi Rapace in another clip. These giant aliens, it seems, have had a big role in human history.

Scott says he wanted to answer the big questions of life when he first sat down with screenwriters Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof to hammer out the story.

“Out of the creative process emerged a new, grand mythology, in which this original story takes place,” he says.

“The keen fan will recognise strands of Alien’s DNA, so to speak, but the ideas tackled in this film are unique, far-reaching and provocative.”

The cynical fan might also recognise the debunked theories of Swiss writer Erich Von Däniken, the mythology of the film and TV series Stargate and the beliefs of the shadowy cult of Scientology.

But even if there’s a familiar ring to the story, the film should look amazing.

Going back to the principles of his two sci-fi classics – the original Alien and 1982’s Blade Runner – Scott built huge sets on Pinewood’s 007 stage and tasked designers to work on all the minutiae of the futuristic world.

“You think about everything, down to the shoelaces,” he says.

And again, he’s laced the sci-fi with nerve-jangling horror.

The iconic moment of the original was the “chest-burster” scene when an alien parasite erupted from John Hurt’s chest.

And Scott promises to put his new team of adventurers through an equally grisly ordeal.

“There is a scene that could be called the equivalent of that in this film,” he says.